“Blessed” Expanded

We got home from PAX, then everyone got sick. Super Bowl Sunday was not the peak of the germ mountain, that didn’t come until Wednesday.

Literal side note:Lady Gaga was amazing!

I had been doing everything I could to make the boys comfortable, we took cool baths to help with fevers, I used my fingers instead of harsh tissues when wiping noses (I used gallons of soap and hand sanitizer), I made sure they were both hydrated and J2 was allowed to eat whatever he wanted. The only thing that I couldn’t seem to help with was J3’s eyes, I wiped them with warm damp cloths, dripped breastmilk onto them and tried to keep them as clean as possible.

Alas, it was to no avail.

We woke up Wednesday morning and J3’s left eye was so swollen and inflamed that he could barely see out of it. If that wasn’t bad enough, it seemed that the medications Josh was on weren’t working as efficiently as they could. He woke up barely able to speak, and when he did it was followed by a coughing fit, we figured he probably needed time to actually rest. So, Josh stayed home and slept while I took the boys to the pediatrician.

Two hundred dollars later (we’re still paying the deductible) I find out that J2 is recovering well from his cold, we just have to be patient and wait for the cough to work itself out, but J3 has an eye and ear infection. He was prescribed a powerful antibiotic that tastes disgusting and would give him loose stools (bleurgh), so the doctor recommended that we give him half a sachet of a probiotic every day to keep things a bit firmer inside (double bleurgh). J3 does not like taking his medication.

I am very, very, pleased to say that he no longer looks like the worlds cutest pirate, and that he mostly retained his cheerful demeanor throughout the past week.

“Why was this week so bad?” You might be asking yourself. Remember how I said that Josh’s meds weren’t working as well as they could? Turns out they were doing the best they could, it’s just that this cold is a beast. J2 and J3 still have runny noses and coughs, which of course affected their sleeping.

Q: What’s worse than a husband and a couple of little boys with colds?
A: A husband and a couple of little boys with colds who can’t sleep because of the coughing and stuffy sinuses, and one who doesn’t just poop in his diaper, but explodes out of it.

Seriously, we moved J3 up two diaper sizes this week just to try to contain it, it was costing us a fortune in laundry detergent!

The worst part about this week has been the sleep deprivation. J3 has been sleeping in our room again so he didn’t disturb J2, which of course meant he disturbed us, and yet J2 turned up in our room every night. He would either crawl in between us and then push Josh out of bed, or climb directly on top of me. If anyone out there knows what that’s like, then you know how disruptive it is to one night’s sleep, now imagine that happening every night for over a week.

But, like I said here, there are a lot more things that I have to be thankful for, like my husband and wonderful kids. I just need to remember that the next time I complain about losing a few hours of sleep.